This is what goes on in my house every Friday night thanks to my nine year old.
The obsession du jour. WWE.

Gone are the days of Lego.
The days of Ninjago.
The days of super heroes and Star Wars (although he still geeks out to them at the movies).

Now. Every Friday night, we get to see the ultimate male soap opera.
You want over-the-top dramatics and bad acting? Well turn off your Spanish soap and come watch this! First the entrance. Each “wrestler” has a theme song that they play walking to the stage….I mean…ring.

At first I thought it was violent, but then I realized it’s a dance. A dance where no one really touches – you grunt, you scream, and then it’s over. These men are on a bouncy stage, in short, tight, clothes completely avoiding each other. And the incredibly big crowd loves it.
I know all the characters now, John Cena, The Rock….actually those are the only ones I remember.

I’m usually catching up on my US Weekly or People magazine while all this goes on.
So really, who am I to judge?

She’s been getting a lot of flack lately. First her lifestyle website, GOOP, listed her top spring must haves. A list that totaled up to well over $100,000. Then she was named People magazine’s most beautiful woman. This past week she showed up wearing a see-through side-paneled dress that showed all of her assets.

In the past she’s even been quoted saying things like,” I can’t pretend I make $25,000 a year because I don’t”.

She works out for 4 hours a day dancing around to Tracey Anderson – and now they’ve opened torture excercise schools all over the world. So we can all have tight, toned, dancer’s bodies. Ummm. Sure.

She named her kids Apple and Moses.

I get why she has haters.

But I have a soft spot for her.

I love all her horrible movies. I love all her great movies. Sliding Doors, Se7en, Shakespeare In Love, Sylvia – loved them all.

I loved her on Oprah talking about her perfect macrobiotic life and “mysterious” marriage to Chris Martin.

She’s absolutely ridiculous and out of touch. I know we could be besties. I really do.

There’s a ton of people who deserve haters; Kim Jong-un, Kim Kardashian, Mark Sanford – you get the point.

But why do people hate GP so much (that’s what dedicated readers to GOOP call her, fyi)? Speaking of GOOP, her website, they’ve added a new feature. Every month they highlight a different, esoteric, completely-out-of-touch-with-the-majority-of-the-world company. This month it’s Foundwell. If your only worry is how to stock a vintage bar – and money is no object – it’s for you. And although money is a huge, massive object for me, it’s for me too. Because that kind of flight of fancy doesn’t bother me. It makes me insanely curious. I dream about the people who really do go on the site and see the $950 sterling silver shot cup and say, “finally, I’ve found it”.

So give her a break will ya. She ain’t so bad. She can’t help her rich, untouchable life. She was just born that way.

Did I mention I like wine?
A few years ago this was a regular sized vase that sat on my kitchen counter.
Then it…evolved.
Now it’s art. Yup. Art.
Not a raging addiction. Nope. It’s not that at all.
This past weekend when we had our friends and family over, someone casually asked if I’d gotten the corks at Home Goods. They sell them you know. Huh.
Did not know that.
I laughed nervously and redirected the conversation.
Another party goer suggested a craft I could do with them.
I laughed nervously and redirected the conversation.
I get a lot of slack for this…collection.
Every Easter there’s an aunt that includes it in her prayers, as in, “please God don’t let it fill up anymore.”
Whatever.
The way I look at it, it’s only half full.
I’m a wine optimist.
Shut-up.

This picture is circa 2000.
I had just gotten a job at a Fortune 500 in NYC. After two years of being at home with my baby, I was back at work as an event planner and loving it. Technically I wasn’t a planner until a year later – in the beginning I was an admin.
An admin to an insane, crazy, brilliant woman who ran our group. The woman who gave me a 45 minute lecture on using colored folders instead of beige folders (the colors distracted her as she walked by my cube). The woman who called me from the Tarmac while boarding a flight to tell me she doesn’t like prop planes and why hadn’t I known that and I better fix it ASAP (I couldn’t because there were only prop planes flying to this part of Colorado. I had offered to book her a car the day before when I warned her about this but she hadn’t been listening, something about researching the perfect toilet – no joke).
But all those moments that would have driven me to quit turned into funny stories we shared. Funny war stories at the lunch table.
We worked really really hard. Almost 24/7. Weekends. Holidays. For no money. It was rough.
But every day, we had lunch together – the whole group. There are a few ladies missing from this pic but this was the core group. We also had a Swiss National and a Brit.
We bitched, we ranted, we raved, but most of all – we laughed.
This restaurant lunch was a rarity. Almost all lunches were either in the cafeteria or at a table on our floor.
No one from other groups ever joined – probably because they weren’t invited. This was anti-networking. This was cocooning.
The majority of the lunch was used to make fun of each other. And there was plenty of material. Marriages, weirdo eating habits, childhood traumas – all ripe for the picking. We left our egos in our cube. Belly laughter ensued.
Then we’d go back to working our asses off.
There were weddings, babies, break-ups, promotions, and more.
The crazy boss lady left. And shockingly, in hindsight, I would miss her. Aside from the batshit crazy episodes, I learned a lot from her. And from all those ladies.
It was and continues to be the best job I ever had.

All through high school my hair was long. Really long. Down to my butt long. It was wavy and thick and beautiful. The week before I graduated I got it all cut off – thanks to Tasha Fogelman and her continuous peer pressure.

That’s when it all went down hill. My long waves became short frizz.

In college it didn’t matter. No one cared. It was cool to not care.

Then I got my first real city jobs working with city girls. Everyone had straight, sleek hair. I discovered this magical thing called a blow-out. It was so…civilized.

Since then I’ve dedicated a good deal of my life to straightening my hair. Flat square brushes, big round brushes, anti-frizz serum. Those are my friends.